East Hall: WMU will save core of its birthplace but fates of former training school and gym are uncertain

KALAMAZOO, MI – The Georgian Revival styled facade of East Hall, with its lighted cupola and columned portico perched above the city on Prospect Hill, are among the only architectural elements to remain under Western Michigan University’s proposed renovation of East Campus.

The core of the building will be renovated into an alumni center, where officials intend to display university history and host alumni and student gatherings, possibly even orientation.

The original two-story, brick building was 138 feet long and 94 feet wide at the time it was built and contained administration offices, 12 classrooms, a small assembly room, laboratories, a library and a heating plant for what was then Western State Normal School.

Within a year of completion of the building dubbed “the Acropolis of Kalamazoo” by humorist Will Rogers, the institution's first president, Dwight Waldo, was already “prodding” the state for an additional $72,000 to add a gymnasium and recitation rooms, according to Dr. James O. Knauss who chronicled WMU's history in “The Fifty First Years.”

“President Waldo was interested in getting more men into the teaching profession,” said Sharon Carlson, director of Archives & Regional History Collections at WMU. “He was making the case that teachers weren't paid as well as other professions. If you got more men into the profession, it would elevate the pay. My take has been, build a fabulous gym and you’ll get more men going into education.”

Carlson has been working out of that very gymnasium in the north wing of East Hall for 21 years, since WMU relocated its archives there. Gym ropes still hang from the ceiling; boxes of archival material fill what used to be a second-story indoor track and the basement pool space.

The gym was also used as an auditorium, where Waldo gave his first speeches. Famous figures who spoke there include Nobel Peace Prize winner Jane Addams in 1920, and poet Carl Sandberg in 1925 and 1950.

The north and south wings of the East Hall are not included in WMU’s current renovation plans and are slated for demolition, however, the university plans to hold fundraisers in an effort to save the annexed sections of the building.

The south wing was added in 1909, when the state Legislature granted Waldo $60,000 to build a practice-teaching facility for grades K-7 called the Campus School. An 8th grade was added in 1911 to the school, which became known as State High or University High. The training-school model was an educational trend at the time.

“Most people who have seen it say it reflects the ideas of reformers like Ida Densmore and John Dewey,” Carlson said of the wing. “Dewey thought that play, nature study and art were important to a child’s development and he also advocated for space where children could move around. That part of the building is designed with those ideas in mind.”

By the 1950s, nearly all of its graduates were heading to college, a feat modern high schools still struggle to accomplish, Carlson said. “It’s not surprising that children of faculty members and the community elite attended and graduated from that school,” she said.

By 1970 the training schools had closed and East Hall housed the College of Business departments of accountancy and management.

Tom Carey, who has been teaching business management at WMU for more than 38 years, attended classes in East Hall as a student and later taught there himself. His fondest memory of East Campus: A midnight kiss with his soon-to-be wife beneath a columned portico – a longtime, right-of-passage tradition for female “coed” students.

Carey spent years meeting with students in Room 169. His office was inside a classroom, and he'd have to cut through when classes were in session to get to his office.

He said it was only a matter of time until the building proved inadequate for teaching.

“The East Campus buildings were run down by the late 80s,” Carey said. “Different critters would visit your class. It was not designed for the number of students or faculty and parking was problem. The radiators clank loudly, so when you had a class you had to work around the ding of the noise from the radiators.”

Of the three parts of East Hall, the exterior of the original Administration Building is in the best overall condition, according to an earlier East Hall renovation study.

Carey recalls when east and west portico of East Hall were removed in 1979.

“It was a matter of necessity before they fell down,” he said. “The footings were pulling away from the building; they were not up to today’s code at all.”

The university has been requesting help to fund the renovation of East Campus, specifically East Hall, since 1989 and moved the WMU Archives and Regional History Collections to the gymnasium wing of East Hall a year later.

The building has also been utilized as a gallery space for art students.

“The lighted cupola is what older alumni always remember,” Carey said. “What they need to do is put it at some magnificent place on campus. We have new programs, we need money for student scholarships and we have new medical school. In my view those things are more important.”

Carlson says climbing up a circular staircase inside East Hall, which leads to the cupola, and the glorious view of Kalamazoo are her favorite parts of the university’s birthplace. The cupola walls contain signatures and dates from the early 20th Century, which she hopes to see exhibited at the soon-to-be alumni center.